Jake Gyllenhaal is determined to star in another Broadway musical.
“There are so many musicals I love so deeply,” Gyllenhaal, who starred in a revival of “Sunday in the Park With George” with Annaleigh Ashford in 2017, told PvNew at the Los Angeles premiere of his new action drama, “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant,” on Monday evening. “At some point, I’ve always loved ‘Fiddler on the Roof.’ I’d love to do that.”
Gyllenhaal’s godmother, Jamie Lee Curtis, was at “The Covenant” premiere and recalled how the actor was supposed to star as Tevye in a school production of “Fiddler” when he was a high school senior. He left the show when he was offered the lead in the 1999 drama “October Sky.”
“I knew then how committed he was to being an actor because most people wouldn’t give up that high school slot for a little indie movie. Most people would be like, ‘No, I’m going to star in the high school musical,’” Curtis said. “I knew then that that was a dedication to the art form that was different than just being super talented and getting a lot of attention.”
In “The Covenant,” directed and co-written by Ritchie, Gyllenhaal plays an Army sergeant during the war in Afghanistan. After he’s injured, he returns to the region to help his unit’s interpreter (Dar Salim) escape the Taliban to come to the U.S.
In one brutal sequence, Gyllenhaal’s injured character is brought to safety by the interpreter over treacherous desert terrain.
“Guy gave me a 60-page script but he never told me that he was going to be filming that section at the end of every day — me being dragged with fake blood and rocks and dirt and water being thrown in my face pretty much for an hour and a half every day,” Gyllenhaal recalled. “We’d put me on the cart, turn me upside-down and Dar would push and pull me up and down hills.”
Salim insisted on doing all the pushing and pulling on his own, even when Ritchie offered a stuntman to do the job.
“I was adamant,” Salim said. “I was like, ‘No, let me do it.’ Some of the best pushing sequences were when a stunt guy was supposed to do it but I did it… I wouldn’t miss the chance to do the physical stuff myself.”
